It’s good that Australian passports now last for 10 years, but what’s not so good is the shock that comes when the photo in one that’s renewed shows just how much the face of the passport holder has changed from the time of issue of the old one. Change is more acceptable when seen as less confronting.
Radical politicians seem intent on confrontational change and appear to give little thought to the natural growth our nation experienced before their party came into office. But then the nature of zealots is to do whatever is necessary to reach Utopia – as though they are oblivious to the fact that the word means Nowhere.
Jesus of Nazareth is the thinking man’s zealot. Yes, he overthrew the greedy money-changers’ tables that polluted the purity of worshippers. (“A zeal for your house has consumed me!” as the Bible declares.) Yet Jesus warned of the damage that can result from thoughtless change.
“No one puts new wine into old wineskins. The old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the wineskins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins. That way both wine and wineskins are preserved.” (Matthew 9:17) Before the days of bottles wine was stored in wineskins — new animal hide that stretched as the wine fermented. “Both are preserved.” The wine preserved the suppleness of the wineskin, and the wineskin allowed for the new wine’s expansion.
Common sense, when you think about it, and a good illustration of the plight that socialist governments are likely to find themselves in once their zeal exceeds our financial capacity to maintain their expenditure on Global Warming and other crazy concepts.
Climate zealots could care less, of course, and Socialist governments have proved it. It was reported that China closed “an extra 220 factories in and around Beijing” to reduce air pollution during the Olympic Games held in that huge city. I doubt there would be anywhere near that number of air-polluting factories in the whole of Australia.
The answer, according to Jesus, is to maintain a proper tension between development and containment, one that allows for both. Of course, if the aim of socialists is to fill ‘old wineskins’ with ‘old wine’ – contain old ideas by restricting expansion – nothing old will be spoiled but then again, nothing new will develop either.
Bottom Line: what will they do when the financial ‘wine’ runs out? As the woman and her son found out. After they had gathered the last empty container in their neighbourhood, the potentially endless supply of oil stopped (2 Kings 4:6). The supply of God’s Spirit is not the question; the question is our capacity to contain that supply.